In a series of commentaries on the human condition — life, truth, happiness, death — a spinster sister takes in her dead sister’s children; a man is entranced by the endless waves which roll and crash in the ocean; a carpenter wrestles with the burden of being everyone’s confidante; a dying railroad crossing watchman shares a simple but complex wisdom.

Terrence and Ruth, a middle-aged couple, move house for a fresh start - but their new house is in disrepair. Ruth contends with sickness, unfulfillment, and her staling marriage while laboriously cleaning it.

After his death, a Judge converses with an old friend and a philosopher about the reality of an afterlife and grapples with the idea of regaining people he’s missed his entire life.

A research psychologist visits a peculiar asylum patient who recounts his life story. The patient warns the researcher about how obsession with the pursuit of knowledge can make one lose sight of their humanity until it is unsalvageable.

A man's lonely life focused on the pursuit of reason and music leaves him questioning what more there may be in the lives of other people and of religion.

When a worker at a grocery store witnesses a man's arm get severed while attempting to grab a watermelon, it reminds him of an old story during slavery where a watermelon was the symbol of a blessing.

One hot summer day, two girls wander into a park and get into an argument—and trouble.

After two of a man's acquaintances die by suicide, he goes on a hunting trip and can't stop thinking about why they wanted to die.

A man in his thirties recounts two separate memories: being stranded in the middle of a blocked highway, and waiting for his partner inside an abortion clinic. Years after these events have occurred, he contemplates the similarities between them.

After a drunk college boy falls off a balcony, a slew of characters--a groundskeeper, another student, a chaplain, and an RA--relate to his death in different ways. Their stories are sidelined for the core matter: that a boy died.